Xbox One will get louder and slower instead of overheating

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Microsoft has already explained how the design of the Xbox One is meant to allow it to run completely silently and remain switched on for a decade. While that may be the case, this is a high performance piece of kit that’s going to generate quite a bit of heat when under load running a game. Microsoft also has to cater for the fact people will cram the console into a crowded TV unit, leave stuff on top of its flat casing, and games will push the machine ever harder as developers get to grips with the hardware.

Any thoughts about the Xbox One potentially RRoDing like the Xbox 360 have been put to rest though. Leo del Castillo, General Manager of Console Development at Microsoft, explained this week that that the Xbox One is a lot more intelligent than the Xbox 360 when it comes to managing heat and stopping itself from overheating.

According to Castillo, the Xbox One has been designed to never run at its full performance capacity under normal conditions. That way there’s always some headroom if things start to go awry. In theory, the console should never overheat because there are two controls in place to stop it happening.

The first is fan speed, which can be increased if necessary to compensate for a greater amount of heat inside the machine. But fan speed will have a limit, so what happens if that’s not enough? The second countermeasure the Xbox One has is something PC components have been using for years — the ability to slow down and cut the amount of power being used.

In the “slow down” mode the Xbox One will use less power by lowering the performance of the GPU and CPU. In turn, those chips will generate less heat and the internal fan should then be able to cope and get the console back within its normal operating temperature window. The side effect of this is game performance may be impacted, however, under normal circumstances a game should never be able to get the Xbox One into such a state on its own.

So unless you block the cooling vents on the machine, or sit something else that runs hot on top of the Xbox One, it should never overheat. In the worst case your games may slow down and the internal fan becomes audible.